Black Ice (8 page)

It was a pink slip of paper, a copy of the marriage certificate.

That told me that she had married  Pall Olafsson in a civil ceremony. It told me that  Pall Olafsson  was thirty-four. It told me  that   he  was  a  welder.  And  it  told  me  that  he  lived  at Breidholt.  That  meant  it  was  a love match. If you  married someone for money  they wouldn't be living at Breidholt- the Rolls-Royces were a bit thin on the ground out  there.

All of that  was both interesting and surprising. What  was a lot more of both was the date. They'd got married exactly nine days  earlier.

Which  meant  she'd  spent  at  least  one-ninth of her  honey moon with me. To a little old romantic like me, that didn't seem absolutely right.

'Thank you for all your help,'  I said to the hamster, as I left.

He didn't even look up.

Across in the park, Eric the Unsteady was looking somewhat wrecked after a day's pillaging, and ready for the next longboat home.  I knew how he felt.

16

The  Kaffivagninn used  to be exactly  what  it sounds  like - a coffee wagon  for the fishermen  and  harbour workers. Now it's grown  up into a charming one-room  restaurant perched on the edge of the harbour wall.

At first sight you could almost take it for one of those London fish restaurants where they've  laid the atmosphere on a shade too thick. Only  here the nets outside are still damp from the sea, the fish is practically wriggling when it hits your plate, and no one has ever questioned the authenticity of the scented air. To you it might  be the stench offish: the Icelanders call it the smell of money- and  they know what  they're talking about.

The  Kaffivagninn is the  real  thing  all right,  and  so's  their fish.

I'd  planned  on digging out  Ivan  and Christopher Bell. But my head hurt from the pan blow, and  I wanted  to think about the implications of the revelation  at the Hagstofa, so I walked down to the harbour. I had lobster tails fried on a spit, and I sat and looked out of the window. The harbour was packed:every thing  from  little  plump  plastic  tubs  to creaking  old  wooden boats and  the big steel jobs, their plates stained  with work.

Beyond   the  forest  of  masts,   you  could  see  clear   across Faxafloi Bay to Snaefellsjokull. In the pure northern light, you felt as though you could reach out and touch the cold snows on the side of the mountains. Quite honestly, the  lobster  wasn't much  more  than  perfect,  and  I was all set  to sit  there  for a month or two, watching  the light and the water making eyes at each other,  when the chair opposite  squeaked as a wide figure lowered itself upon it.

'The fish is good here,' said  Petursson.

'Definitely  got the edge on the guillemot.'

'I thought  you would be dining  with your Russian  friend.'

'He's busy taking photographs of all your armed  forces.'

'That will not take  him  long.'  He  smiled.  Iceland  doesn't have any forces, armed  or otherwise.

'You  have had a busy day?'

I wondered  how much  he'd  know about  my day.  In a place that size, probably everything. Even so, I thought I'd let him tell me.

'So so.'

All he had  to do was to raise one  big hand  to have  a girl running out  with coffees. I took a good look at  him as he sat there.   Tonight  he  was  wearing   a  plain   oatmeal-coloured raincoat   and  an  old-fashioned wide-brimmed  hat  which  he placed  carefully  on  his  knee,  rather   than  on  the  table.   It surprised me he didn't put all his clothes on hangers  before he risked sitting  down.

'We were talking  about  you today.'

'I'm flattered.'

'We are still puzzled, Mr Craven. We still do not quite  know where  to place  you ... no, no, please do not  protest.  I know that you are  a journalist. The question  is: are you something else as well?'

'I thought you did pretty  well to turn  up all that stuff on me last  night.'

He shrugged. 'As I told you, I worked in London.  I thought perhaps I would find that you are attached to one of the more informal security sections.  Apparently not.'

Brightly, I grinned  up at him. 'So there we are then.'

'So there we are.  We shall hope so.' He raised his cup with difficulty in his big hand.  'You went back to the flat. I would be grateful if you would  tell me about  it.'

I was ready for the question, but not for the careful courtesy with  which  he  put  it.  I  had  the  feeling  he was giving  me a chance to be straight with him. I had another feeling: if I didn’t take it, I'd  regret  it. So I told him the whole thing: about  the way the place had been wrecked,  Mr Chamois in the foyer, the crack  over  the  head,  even  the  pan.  The only  thing  I didn't mention  was the photograph- well, that  had gone anyway.

I   ended   up:   'Do   you   think   Mr   Chamois  bopped   me, Petursson?'

He rubbed his fingers up the long bones of his jaw. 'No, I do

not think he did,'  he said, in his roller-coaster accent. 'And now you want  to know why. Many  reasons.  The ones you say, like why would  he come back, and  how did he get the pan, and so on.  But  there  is another reason. It does  not  bother  you if I smoke?'

He tapped one of his small cigars out of the packet and lit it with  a green  plastic  lighter.  He returned both the packet and the lighter to his pocket  before continuing.

'He  is a diplomat,' he said.

'A diplomat? What  sort of diplomat?'

'Not  the sort  to assault  journalists, I can assure  you.'

'What nationality is he? What  was he doing?'

He  rapped the  table  top  twice  to silence  me. 'Listen,   Mr Craven, listen  to me. The  man who hit you with the pan was hiding  in the kitchen.'

He picked a matchstick out of the ashtray and scraped  the ash off the end of his cigar before it fell in an unauthorised place.

He wasn't  a man for chances,  Petursson. That was what  made him so good.

'How  do you know?'

'Simple.  My men were watching  the flat. They  saw  him go in.

'So why didn't they arrest  him?'

'Also simple.  They  didn't see him  leave.  He  got  out  by a service door at the side.'

'Was  he a diplomat too?'

He chose to ignore the sardonic inflexion. 'No,  not this man.

I was hoping you might tell us a little about him, Mr Craven?'  I  pointed  at  the top of my head.  'That's all  I know  about him.'

He sat  back in his chair  and studied  me with an interested, uncritical air. 'That is my difficulty, you see. Am I telling you things? Or  am I telling you things  you already  know? That is my main worry. That, and how much trouble you can make for my country.'

He rose clumsily,  heaving  the chair  back with one hand.

'I'd like you to take a little walk with me, if you would be so kind.'

'Fine,' I said. 'But  I didn't know anything about  the man in the kitchen, you know. For all I know, he could've been there all night.'

'Oh,  no, Mr Craven,' he said, checking the angle of his hat in the window. 'If he had been, you would have been dead. By the way, give me your opinion on the two gentlemen by the harbour as we go, will you?'

He knew how to deliver a line all right, did Petursson, and  I hoped  I looked appropriately shocked:  because  he was monitoring every reaction.  Before I had time to wonder  about the man who might have killed me, Petursson had  ushered  me outside into the soft light of the late evening.  When  he took my sleeve to point out the snow on the mountains, I knew he was giving me time to look at the two men dawdling at the water's edge.

They  didn't even need to touch  each other. The  effect that Petursson's appearance had  on them  was minute but  un mistakable. One,  who was throwing  stones at a plastic  bottle in  the  water,  glimpsed   us as  he turned. His  eyes flicked like knives  to  his  mate,   who  had  his  back  to  us.  With  a  quick movement of his hand, he tossed the remaining half-dozen or so stones into  the  water   and,   before  the  pitter-patter of  their landing had died,  the two of them were walking off briskly, shoulder to shoulder.

We watched them go before we, at  a much  more leisurely rate,  followed.

'Well?  Did anything about them strike  you?'

'Obviously they're fishermen.' He didn't look too amazed  by that  deduction. Men  in a semi-uniform of roll-neck  sweater, reefer-type jacket,  and  roll-on woollen hats, all dark  blue, seen patrolling a harbour were unlikely to be trapeze  artists.

'Yes,  that  is obvious, I  agree.  Let us  take  a look at  their vessel.'

By the time we got to the first corner, they were just rounding the next one, two yards ahead. When we reached  that comer, they   were  disappearing  up  the  gangplank  of  a  dirty   grey trawler.

'Fishermen- that's all?'

'I'd say so.'

They  were men, they were off a fishing-boat, so that was fair enough. What  he meant  - and  what  I knew perfectly  well he meant - was  that  they  weren't fishermen. From  what  little  I could see of their heads,  their hair was too well trimmed. They were too sprucely dressed. They were too clean.  They moved with short  twelve-inch  steps,  clipped,  quick,  purposeful. It's a style that stays long after you've forgotten  your drill sergeant's name.    Whatever they   called   themselves   now,   they   were military men.

But  just  this  once  I  thought it  wouldn't do  any  harm  for Petursson to be doing the guessing.

'Very  well,'  he said.  'Now see what  you can  tell me about their ship.'

This  time, instead  of playing stupid, I decided  to show him what  a bright  little fellow I could  be.

'Isn't it an AGI?'

Under the brim of his hat, he looked surprised. 'How do you know about such things?'

'Aliens  Gathering  Intelligence,' I  intoned   heavily,  and   I won't say that  I wasn't enjoying  his surprise. 'Oh, I've written about  them.'

I looked over the grey hull with the white superstructure and the name  Pushkin in Cyrillic lettering on the bows and  English on the side of the bridge. The only smartly-painted bit was the hammer and  sickle  in  red  on  the  funnel.  That figured.  The Russians  knock  hell out  of their  trawlers  for a few years and then   flog  them   to  some   poor   unsuspecting Third-World country.

'What makes you think it's a spy-ship?' he asked.

Now I really did let myself go. 'Look at all those aerials  and DF  loops.  Christ, you  could  get  the  BBC's   News  at  One half-an-hour early with that lot. Even so, I'm surprised it's not got the Hydrographic Service flag flying- you know, blue with a white lighthouse.'

He was just  about  to give me ten out  of ten  when  a sound above  made  us both look up.

A fat old man with eyes like holes poked in grey pastry  came up to the side to have a look at  us. He dragged on a cigarette butt with  the  urgency  you always  feel for  the last  pull,  then watched  it fall into the oily sea below.

'You are  very  well  informed,' Petursson said  admiringly.

'You are  correct  about  the flag though. But don't you  think those nets are curious?'

I looked where  he was pointing. The  deck was covered  in a jumble  of nylon netting. Why would a spy-ship want nets?

'And  this is a stern  trawler. So far as I know, the Russians have not yet used a stern  trawler  as an AGI.'

'So what is it then?'

Again, he ignored my question, as we strolled  alongside the scarred  grey flanks of the trawler.  'We thought as you did,  at first. And of course for the Russians to bring a spy-ship in here even for. repairs,  as  they insist  would be  provocative. As a fulltrui  of the government, I sought  permission to  board her and  have a look around.'

'Christ!' From a bit closer, I'd suddenly realised  that  the fat fisherman who was watching us wasn't a fat fisherman at all. It was a fat fisherwoman. Although how  I  managed to detect some  vestige  of femininity in that  waddling bundle  of rags,  I couldn't say.

'A woman, yes. It is not so uncommon. So, as I say, I sought permission to inspect  this vessel.'

'And did  you?'

'Yes.' He stopped and  looked  down  at  me and  I saw  the twinkle of amusement in his face as he enjoyed telling his story.

'They were most helpful,  the captain, the crew, everybody.'

'What did you find?' I asked, which was what he wanted me to do.

'What did I find?' He examined the ship again through narrowed eyes as though  he'd only just noticed it. 'I found, fish, Mr Craven.'

I  was  thinking about  that   when  I  saw  the  woman   had shuffled  along  so she was almost  above  us.

'Good  evening, madam,' I called out.  'And how are you?'

No expression touched   her  pudding features.  I  heard  her

hawking in the back of her throat and then she spat solidly and with  great  relish.  It  landed  an  inch  away  from  the gleaming brown  toe of Petursson's shoe. He raised  his face towards  her. She went.

'Yes, lots and lots of fish.  Isn't that a surprise? So we gave her the All Clear. Isn't that what it said on that interesting badge of yours.  All Clear?'

You  don't realise  how  much  you  rely on  Mother   Nature  to switch  off the lights  until she lets you down.

Hulda's thin  curtains were  useless against   the pale steady light of the northern night.  I even tried hanging  my jacket over the window  but it kept slipping  down. I wished I'd had some of the tinfoil the American troops use to seal their windows out at the  Keflavik  base.

It seemed   like  a  good  chance   to give  the  old  meditation another go. I might've known:  the minute I was sitting  up all relaxed  and  shurring-ing away,  the  pictures  started   tippling through my  mind  like a  hysterical   video.  Oddly  enough,  it wasn't the mystery  man in the chamois jacket (a diplomat, had Petursson said?),  or the sputnik or the spy-ship that wasn't a spy-ship, or even  Solrun,  that  kept  cropping up again  in the screen   of  my  mind.   It  was  Magnus,  the   blondie   at   theKopavogur office.

And the  way he'd  said  'Utlendingar'. Foreigners. Hands across-the-sea is all very well until the hands  start  coming  in contact  with sisters, girlfriends  and wives. Before you know it, you've got  fists-across-the-bar.  Okay,  there   was  a  certain historic  irony  in  that   the  Vikings  were  supposed  to  have pioneered take-away women, but it must still be peeving to see visitors coming down  the plane steps consulting their  phrase books for 'What are you doing  tonight?'